New cyber attack targets Iran

Iranian leaders say the country has been targeted by a new computer virus, 10 months after its nuclear program was hit in a separate cyber attack.

Gholam Reza Jalali, a military officer, told Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency the damage from the new virus, called Stars, has been low so far.

He said Iranian experts were still investigating the full scope of the malware's abilities.

"Certain characteristics about the Stars virus have been identified, including that it is compatible with the [targeted] system," he said.

"In the initial stage, the damage is low and it is likely to be mistaken for governmental executable files."

Mr Jalali did not say what kind of equipment the virus was targeting or when and how it had been spotted.

Iran has accused the United States and Israel of launching the Stuxnet virus last year, which was designed to hurt the country's controversial nuclear program.

Stuxnet infected tens of thousands of computers and related equipment.

In December, Iran implicitly admitted its uranium enrichment plant in the central city of Natanz, which is regularly inspected by the UN nuclear watchdog, had been the victim of the worm.

Mr Jalali urged the foreign ministry to take appropriate measures amid the ongoing "cyber attacks" against Iran, and said efforts to contain Stuxnet were still ongoing, Mehr reported.

"Confronting the Stuxnet virus does not mean that the threat has been fully removed, since viruses have a certain life span and it is possible that they continue their activity in a different form," he said.

Computer security firm Symantec said in November that Stuxnet might have been designed to disrupt the motors that power gas centrifuges used to enrich uranium, the most controversial work of Tehran's nuclear program.

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